The employee lifecycle model is a tried and tested tool to visualise all of your employees and how they engage with your business and brand. But as employees expectations shift, people are spending shorter amounts of time with companies. Let’s take a look at some interesting ways that employers can leverage each stage of the employee lifecycle to attract, engage and retain the best talent.

Attract & recruit the right people

Regardless of how awesome your product or service is, you still may struggle without the right people driving it forward.

Building a strong brand as an employer can prove to be a powerful tool in the search for perfect candidates. By developing an image of your organisation as a ‘great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders, you’re going to attract the right talent that will engage with your vision and culture.

Leveraging social media to give an insight into what it’s like to work for your company is one way to do this. Current employees are often your best brand ambassadors, so incentivising them with the winning combination of compensation, benefits and an enticing workplace culture can help to drive referrals for high-quality candidates.

Craft a personal onboarding experience

Creating an onboarding process that feels fresh and engaging is a great way that you can improve the long-term prospects for a new team member.Research has shown that a great onboarding process, which starts before day 1 and lasts until their first anniversary, can improve retention, productivity, and encourage innovation.

For a useful run-through of some of the best onboarding practices in 2017, check out our blog posthere.

Learning & development

Employees often have an innate desire to learn, feel inspired and be presented with opportunities. With a lack of development opportunities, staff can easily begin to feel stagnant in their careers, and consider moving on – with studies showing as many as40% of employees who receive poor job training leaving their positions within the first year.

By encouraging external learning and rewarding learning on an employee’s own time, you are reducing the risk of staff feeling unfulfilled. The benefits are felt two-fold, as more experienced staff members can bring more to the business.

Have a retention plan

In many ways, retention of top staff comes from the culmination of your effort in previous areas of the employee lifecycle. When you focus your energies on ensuring employees are both happy and challenged in their role, foster a positive culture, and provide great onboarding and staff development, people are more likely to stay with the business. And it doesn’t stop there – building great relationships, encouraging feedback and open communication have all shown toimprove retention levels.

Keen to put some of these tips into action? Check out our free whitepaper –The 5 Pillars of Onboarding – for more insights into creating amazing onboarding experiences.